


Merhamet Göster

by ozarkhowler



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Dogs, also some herakles is in the mix, basically this is a ficlet of Sadik and he's Suffering, implied turkey/ancient greece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 13:02:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9441404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozarkhowler/pseuds/ozarkhowler
Summary: O you who have believed, seek help through patience and prayer. Indeed, Allah is with the patient. And do not say about those who are killed in the way of Allah , "They are dead." Rather, they are alive, but you perceive [it] not. (Sura Al-Baqarah, lines 153-154)





	

When she died, they both knew she had never loved him. And when she felt her life slip out of her throat through his fingers, she was just relieved that he would not be another person she would outlive.

_Where is my son? Take care of my son—_

~~

It’s been ninety years since he last looked at Helena. Sadik has been given the hefty, one-man job of catching up to the army being lead by Suleiman, who has been careening nonstop towards Baghdad. Sadik makes stops along the way to make sure the Iraqis are reminded of just who the hell he is.

He doesn’t kill anyone this time around (he’s got to save his energy for the trip) but he makes a big show of toppling tents and setting things on fire. Just enough to shake them up and get them to run.

He’s about to jump back onto his horse after having had that _lovely_ little detour when he sees something moving out of the corner of his eye. The way he turns is more muscle memory than intention and he faces a black-mouthed, feather-eared dog, sitting on her haunches, tail gently thumping against the drying dirt.

“Beat it.”

She doesn’t.

“Go on. I’m not your man,” he says in slow, deliberate Arabic, before finally mounting his horse.

He turns to glance back at the smoking wreck of a settlement and still sees the dog. She had not moved an inch.

~~

Death is a mechanical, programmed part of the universe. Death is as inevitable as the sounding of the hour or the rains falling, and yet every time someone falls under his hands he feels as if they weren’t as predestined for it as he would have liked to believe. He gets more sidetracked and, like a child going off the tracks to pick berries, gets more and more lost as he finds more fruit to devour.

Out of the corner of his eye he keeps seeing that black-mouthed, sand colored dog.

His canine teeth feel big and thick in his mouth the further he gets away from the road, and he fights the urge to sink them into someone.

His clothes are stained with ash and when he sees the dog again he begins to wonder if it’s a ghost.

There finally reaches a point where he has rode for three days and there is no sign of people. It’s around then that he finally admits to being lost.

His horse collapses after the fourth day; her knee dislocates and she falls like a stone. Sadik closes his eyes before putting her out of her misery. _You were a good horse. I’m sorry._

He walks four days and while the mirages whisper sweet nothings to his ears and eyes he sees something moving in his peripheral vision. He turns and it’s the dog, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. His own tongue feels bleached and dry in his mouth.

He knows it isn’t real when Helena’s contralto whispers into his ear: _where is Herakles?_

_Herakles is a Janissary. Herakles is a slave but paid. It was the only way to settle how much I hate that he’s his father’s son with the fact that he’s also his mother’s. Will you leave me alone, Helena?_

She laughs.

_Never, Sadik._

He’d rather believe that her ghost pushes him down than believe that he fell to his knees of his own volition. He falls on his back and denies it was his fault. His eyes fill with the vision of hers before Helena’s face fades out of view to reveal nothing but distant sky and stars.

He hasn’t tasted water in days but he feels that he’s drowning.

 _Is this what you wanted in the end,_ he asks as he hears distant panting. _Did you want me to go out like this? Did you lead me here?_

The stars are replaced with the sight of a dog’s big, brown eyes. He barks out a laugh.

“Are you gonna eat me now? Revenge for your old master? Go for it, hound. Fucking eat me. Unclean, and you are what you eat, aren’t you?”

The black muzzle gets nearer and nearer, her mouth opens. A long, pink tongue snakes its way across his face once, and then twice, and then three times, until she covers his face with kisses. He stares up at the sky and thinks about how he’d just done his _wudu_ and he was already unclean again, damn it, he’d figured he would have lasted at least another few hours maybe.

The dog vanishes and Sadik contents himself with death, quietly writes his will and testament in the sand swirling over his head and face as the desert cold sets in and he has no will to grab his bedroll. He hears the _scrape scrape_ of paws on the ground and is pleasantly surprised to see the black-mouthed dog with a water skin in her jaws. She drops it on his chest and he empties half of it directly into his gaping mouth. Once he has finished, he manages to sit up, reaching out to the paleness of the top of her head to scratch just behind her feathered ears.

“Good girl.”

~~

He named her Sabir. “Patience”. When he whistles she comes running and she will only leave his heels if he clicks his tongue and says “get out.”

When a man questions his faith for his dog, mentioning the _hadith_ regarding Muhammad’s disdain for them, Sadik replies sharply that all that is _haram_ is that explicitly forbidden by God in the Qu’ran. There is no passage forbidding dogs in the Qu’ran, the source for all of God’s law, therefore his dog is not _haram._ No one dares separate the two anyhow.

When they are apart, she waits at the door for his return. When they are together, she licks at his hands and cries when he doesn’t give her whatever he’s eating. He hisses at her to maintain his reputation while slipping meat under the table.

She sleeps at the foot of his chair while he works and he can almost forget how old they both are.

“I’m not a dog person. I’m not an animal person,” he maintained to anyone who asked. Sabir would softly _boof_ under his desk.

Sadik says she doesn’t sleep in his bed with him and that she sleeps outside. Sadik is a damn liar. Sabir loves him anyway.


End file.
